Makers of a film on abortionist and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell say the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter singled out their project for special objections. They have ankled the massively popular platform in favor of another crowdfunding site.

Ann and Phelim Media have raised nearly $200,000 in five days on crowdfunding site Indiegogo for a planned movie about Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist who was convicted in 2013 on a host of charges including multiple illegal late-term abortions, hundreds of violations of Pennsylvanias informed-consent law, and three counts of murder. The movie will chronicle the man described by ABCs Terry Moran as the most successful serial killer in the history of the world, using stories lifted directly from trial documents. It will also describe the scant attention the establishment media gave to Gosnells killing spree until very late in the trial.

The filmmakers were going to use Kickstarter until they received an e-mail saying their project might upset community guidelines.

Kickstarter had previously helped producers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer raise over $200,000 for their documentary FrackNation. But the filmmakers say the crowdfunding company slow-walked their project once it learned about the topic. McAleer and McElhinney say Kickstarter did not respond to multiple e-mails for several days and finally responded with a request that the project videobe amended before it could go live.

We ask that the phrase 1000s of babies stabbed to death and similar language be modified or removed from the project, a Kickstarter representative identified as George said in a March 27 e-mail to Ann and Phelim Media. We understand your convictions and the horror of this persons crimes, however we are a broad website used by millions of people. Our Community Guidelines outline that we encourage and enforce a culture of respect and consideration, and we ask that that language specifically be modified for those reasons.

Unbelievably, Kickstarter tried to censor us, McAleer tells National Review Online. They said we could only put the project on the site if we agreed not to upset the sensitivities of their community.

Kickstarter told McAleerphrases such as thousands of babies stabbed to death and thousands of babies murdered needed to go to comply with the spirit of our Community Guidelines.

In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Kickstarter CEO YanceyStrickler said, We viewed Kickstarter as a public trust. This is a place of opportunity for anyone to make their thing happen. And its our job to be the stewards of it and to honor it . . . a living breathing cultural institution thats there to represent the interests of everybody.

McAleer says the Gosnell project was singled out for these changes. He points to the Kickstarter campaign for a film project about the Swedish-American serial killer Belle Gunness, which he says had a picture of a dead body on the project page.

Other controversial Kickstarter projects that McAleer says received funding include:

16 projects about stabbing

5 projects about incest

One project with the C word in the project description

44 projects about rape

28 projects with the word F**k or F**king in the title

Some of these projects were based on true stories, some were works of fiction, but all were allowed onto Kickstarter, says McAleer.

But Kickstarter has canceled projects it deemed offensive in the past. A project about cheat codes that shows men how to hook up with women at bars was canceled after bloggers revolted. Kickstarterwrote an apology for allowing the project. This led Kickstarter to amend their community guidelines by banning all seduction guides.

The project submission was accepted on Friday exactly how it was submitted for our review and the filmmakers are still welcome to launch the project on Kickstarter at any time, Kickstarter representative Justin Kazmark told National Review Online. Kickstarter is a platform open to projects from across the creative spectrum that represent an incredibly diverse array of topics and viewpoints. All projects are subject to the same set of community guidelines.

 Joshua Encinias is an Agostinelli Fellow at National Review.

Update: This story has been updated to include a response from Kickstarter.

McAleer says the Gosnell project was singled out for these changes. He points to the Kickstarter campaign for a film project about the Swedish-American serial killer Belle Gunness, which he says had a picture of a dead body on the project page.

Other controversial Kickstarter projects that McAleer says received funding include:

That’s a problem for ANYONE on ANY SITE on the Internet. You are ALWAYS CENSORED no matter what site you’re on. That’s just the way it goes.

Every site is owned by someone (or a company) and that someone or company is the one who determines WHAT CAN BE SAID on their site. That’s simply the right of private property. If you had a website and forum, you would want to control it, too.

3
posted on 04/02/2014 2:58:08 PM PDT
by Star Traveler
(Remember to keep the Messiah of Israel in the One-World Government that we look forward to coming)

This case is about a doctor who killed babies ... What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy  and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors .... Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it. (Report of the Grand Jury)

Gosnell is serving several life sentences but the media basically ignored his crimes and his trial. They ignored the facts that emerged from the trial, like the fact that the babies he murdered suffered terribly. Here is what a neonatologist told the Grand Jury:

The neonatologist testified... If a baby moves, it is alive. Equally troubling, it feels a tremendous amount of pain when its spinal cord is severed. So, the fact that Baby Boy A. continued to move after his spinal cord was cut with scissors means that he did not die instantly. Maybe the cord was not completely severed. In any case, his few moments of life were spent in excruciating pain. (Report of the Grand Jury)

The mainstream media or Hollywood don't think this is a story. Even though Gosnell killed more people than Gary Ridgeway, John Wayne Gacey, The Zodiac Killer and Ted Bundy combined. In a 30 year killing spree, it is thought he killed 1000s of babies. And that wasn't a national story?

"Reserved for media" - empty seats at Gosnell trial

But Jodi Arias who was on trial at the same time as Gosnell, for killing her boyfriend, just one person, was national news.

Hollywood think the Jodi Arias story is so important they have already made a movie about her which has been shown multiple times on TV.

The censorship of the Gosnell story ends now.

We are raising funds for this movie through a revolutionary website called Indiegogo.

Indiegogo enables crowdfunding for important projects.But heres the catch. We've set the budget. But if we fail to raise our target budget, Indiegogo will return all the funds, we will received nothing and the film will never be made.

Indiegogo allows us to bypass the Hollywood studios and the usual funding sources for movies.

Hollywood never would fund a movie such as this.

We funded our last film FrackNation using crowdfunding.

So far, the biggest crowd funded film of all-time is the Veronica Mars movie, a teen detective story that asked for $2.1m and raised $5.7m, we think the Gosnell movie is more important, we think you do too. So we are asking for $2.1m and we are hoping to break the record and make history.

With your help we're going to hire the best screenwriter, director and actors to make sure that the story of Kermit Gosnell gets into every home in America.

Please pledge right now.

We tell a lot about ourselves by the stories we choose to tell and the ones we want to cover up or ignore. Please help us tell this important story. It's a frightening testament to the power of the media that very few people even know about Kermit Gosnell: Americas Most Prolific Serial Killer.

This is your chance to bypass the media information gatekeepers to get tens of millions of Americans thinking about what happened in Philadelphia.

Please send a message that we don't have to wait for someone else to tell the stories that matter, we can do it ourselves.

Please pledge right now and then please then get 10 friends to pledge.

Thank you so much for helping us make history.

Ann

Phelim

Magdalena

ABOUT US

At the LA premiere of our last movie FrackNation

Were known mostly for our award-winning documentary films such as FrackNation, Mine Your Own Business, Not Evil Just Wrong, and The Search for Tristan's Mum

FrackNation was very well received by the critics. Here are just some of the positive reviews we received:

The New York Times said FrackNation was "meticulouslyresearched....provocative"

Variety - the show business bible - said the FrackNation was a "briskly paced...mischievous pic"

In January 2013, "FrackNation" had its TV premiere on Mark Cuban's TV channel AXS TV. It has been since broadcast also on PBS Colorado and Canadian Sun News Network.

"FrackNation" has been also screened all across US, Canada, Australia, Poland and the UK, the film had a special screening at the Houses of Parliament in London, at the European Parliament in Brussels.

It’s day 5 of our fundraising effort and we have now reached one of our milestones, we raised over $250,000! We are so grateful for all the wonderful messages of support and good wishes from so many of you.

We still have a long way to go. For those of you who have not yet donated please do and for those who have please donate again and get your friends to donate.
Gosnell movie will not be made without you.

The New York Times bestselling thriller writer Brad Thor, publicly donated $1,000 yesterday and asked for people to match him on the next $900. Michelle Malkin has donated and hosted a tweetfest to help our fundraising effort, using the hashtag #gosnellmovie

Every site is owned by someone (or a company) and that someone or company is the one who determines WHAT CAN BE SAID on their site. Thats simply the right of private property. If you had a website and forum, you would want to control it, too.

Then the Hollywood libtards and academic historians had better shut the #@&! up about the so-called "Hollywood Blacklist" of known Communists. The studios continued to employ them (albeit under pseudonyms so that the boycotting audiences would be unaware).

There exists a blacklist today that will not be written about in school textbooks or decried in the mainstream media.

9
posted on 04/02/2014 3:36:05 PM PDT
by a fool in paradise
(The Texas judge's decision was to pave the way for same sex divorce for two Massachusetts women.)

While good people nobly (they think) retreat to the First Amendment and allow any and all speech, the wicked have no compunction about inconsistency and unfairness in censorship, so long as their wickedness is given free rein and the good people are made to shut up.

15
posted on 04/02/2014 4:03:13 PM PDT
by LearsFool
("Thou shouldst not have been old, till thou hadst been wise.")

If they would have just said “Gosnell, a man who once had a thought for two seconds at age 8 of becoming a Catholic Priest” (obviously not true) the site would have let them do whatever they wanted. Because twisting the story of a serial killer into one that has even the ever so slightest hint of a religious mass murderer would win an Oscar for best documentary. The left would have contributed heavily. And then, hey, after the donations are in it's like everything else— filmmakers/editors “creative license”. And oops! We were wrong about the Priest part!

Seriously, yeah Kickstarter is a private company but their hypocrisy will give other fundraising sites, including those for sick children, a bad name. And if the movie makers were gay would kickstarter have to run their project description as described? After all, we already know you have to bake a cake at your private business for gay couples even if you don't want to. (I still can't understand why you would want to eat something someone was forced to prepare for you, when you could give the business to some one who thinks the same as you.)

Do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with the facts before voicing an uneducated opinion.

The issue is not about censorship. This issue in this regard concerns a website which claims to support and serve individuals seeking to enlist financial donors to their film projects. Due to the topic of the documentary, the producers of the film were singled out under false claims. Claims which the producers qualified by showing Kickstarters bias as well as their hypocrisy.

I looked at the kickstarter community standards. I guess they found this to be "offensive". If someone's comic book about Thor being cooler than Jesus because this "son of God" kicks ass rather than letting himself get crucified (which is stated as such in the kickstarter campaign) is okay, then they need to spell out in detail what "offenses" are permissible.

There is a political litmus test and we'd be fools not to speak out against the double standard.

I'm unable to find that comic fundraiser today, but I did find this one:

And if the movie makers were gay would kickstarter have to run their project description as described? After all, we already know you have to bake a cake at your private business for gay couples even if you don't want to. (I still can't understand why you would want to eat something someone was forced to prepare for you, when you could give the business to some one who thinks the same as you.)

You bring up a good point about "denial of services".

If a photographer declines to accept a potential client's same sex wedding (in a state that does not recognize same sex marriages, no less), could he survive claiming that it "goes against 'his' community standards" (which by evidence of Kickstarter, do not need to be explicitly stated, just vague references to being offensive)?

30
posted on 04/07/2014 5:19:51 AM PDT
by a fool in paradise
(The new witchhunt: Do you NOW, . . . or have you EVER , . . supported traditional marriage?)

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